Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 11:17:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: Darrell128@aol.com
Subject: NR 97065: OPC General Assembly Breaks Longstanding CRC Fraternal Relationship
NR #1997-065: Orthodox Presbyterian General Assembly Breaks Longstanding
Christian Reformed Fraternal Relationship
The Christian Reformed Church lost its oldest and what was once its closest
sister church relationship in North America on June 10 when the Orthodox
Presbyterian Church voted to break fraternal relations with the CRC over the
issue of the ordination of women. Meeting at Geneva College in the Pittsburgh
suburb of Beaver Falls, the 22,000-member Orthodox Presbyterian Church took
nearly a dozen hours over a period of two days to decide whether to break its
60-year-long relationship with the CRC. While the OPC has cited a number of
reasons for concern in recent years, the formal motion adopted cited only the
CRC's 1995 decision to allow the ordination of women to the offices of
minister, elder, and evangelist. Responding to CRC concerns, the General
Assembly passed a motion without audible dissent noting that last year's
decision "was carefully worded to avoid saying that the CRCNA is not a true
church of Jesus Christ" and that "no OPC General Assembly has ever made such
a judgment." That didn't mean this year's decision to cut ties rather than
continuing the suspension was easy, however. "You don't cut ties with people
that you've had for sixty years without some pain and without being
sorrowful," said Rev. John Galbraith, appointed by the OPC General Assembly
to bring the final fraternal address to next week's CRC synod expressing the
OPC's reasons for severing ties. "At our first General Assembly, they were
the only ones to greet us and to express their affection for us." After
voting to break ties with the CRC, the General Assembly established
"corresponding relations" with the largest group of churches seceding from
the CRC, the United Reformed Churches, and voted to express "thankfulness to
God for their love for the truth of God and the purity of the church of Jesus
Christ, welcome them to the family of Reformed churches, and pray for the
blessing of God on their ministry."
NR #1997-065: For Immediate Release
Orthodox Presbyterian General Assembly Breaks Christian Reformed Fraternal
Relationship
* Vote ends 60-year tie that was once CRC's closest North American
relationship
by Darrell Todd Maurina, Press Officer
United Reformed News Service
BEAVER FALLS, PA (June 10, 1997) -- The Christian Reformed Church lost its
oldest and what was once its closest sister church relationship in North
America on June 10 when the Orthodox Presbyterian Church voted to break
fraternal relations with the CRC over the issue of the ordination of women.
Meeting at Geneva College in the Pittsburgh suburb of Beaver Falls, the
22,000-member Orthodox Presbyterian Church took nearly a dozen hours over a
period of two days to decide whether to break its 60-year-long relationship
with the 285,000-member CRC. While the OPC has cited a number of reasons for
concern in recent years, the formal motion adopted cited only the CRC's 1995
decision to allow the ordination of women to the offices of minister, elder,
and evangelist.
The OPC cited similar grounds last year for suspending its fraternal
relationship with the CRC. That didn't mean this year's decision to cut ties
rather than continuing the suspension was easy, however. "You don't cut ties
with people that you've had for sixty years without some pain and without
being sorrowful," said Rev. John Galbraith, appointed by the OPC General
Assembly to bring the final fraternal address to next week's CRC synod
expressing the OPC's reasons for severing ties. "At our first General
Assembly, they were the only ones to greet us and to express their affection
for us."
Nevertheless, Galbraith said the closeness had waned in recent years as the
CRC had moved toward the ordination of women and as its position on other
issues began to be called into question. "I think that those of the younger
generation in both the OPC and the CRC don't really understand the history so
it's not as difficult for them to cut ties," said Galbraith, who was ordained
by the OPC only a year after it was organized in 1936 as a secession from the
Presbyterian Church (USA). According to Galbraith, the CRC had been most
helpful to the OPC in urging it toward greater commitment to Reformed
theology, introducing it to the Christian day school movement, and in helping
fund and staff Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
After voting to break ties with the CRC, the General Assembly established
"corresponding relations" with the largest group of churches seceding from
the CRC, the United Reformed Churches, and voted to express "thankfulness to
God for their love for the truth of God and the purity of the church of Jesus
Christ, welcome them to the family of Reformed churches, and pray for the
blessing of God on their ministry."
"Corresponding relations" is a new category created this year by the OPC as
an "entry-level" intended to lead to full ecclesiastical fellowship at a
later date.
The OPC emphasized that the decision didn't mean the CRC was a false church.
Responding to CRC concerns, the General Assembly passed a motion without
audible dissent noting that last year's decision "was carefully worded to
avoid saying that the CRCNA is not a true church of Jesus Christ" and that
"no OPC General Assembly has ever made such a judgment."
The final action of the General Assembly was the strongest of three
possibilities that had been proposed. The OPC's Ecumenicity and Interchurch
Relations Committee had originally considered establishing a lower level of
relationship known as "restricted contact." An advisory committee
recommendation advised a somewhat less serious step of extending the
suspension of fraternal ties to the year 2001 and making a final decision at
that time.
Numerous delegates argued that anything short of strong action could be
misinterpreted by the CRC. "If the Christian Reformed Church is going to
understand what we are doing, namely, severing our relationship with them,
they need to understand we are doing it because they are in contradiction to
a clear command of the Bible," said Rev. Tom Tyson, editor of the OPC
denominational magazine New Horizons. "There might be hope that even at this
late date somebody in the CRC might realize that the emperor has no clothes,
and something is terribly wrong."
Advocates of less strong steps emphasized that they were in no way agreeing
with the ordination of women. "Virtually all of us here believe the
implementation of women in office was the gravest mistake, but for us to go
from all to nothing with no plan for a lesser relationship is not wise," said
Rev. Bernard Stonehouse, missionary-at-large for the OPC's Presbytery of
Philadelphia.
"I am no longer committed to the domino theory; we have at least two
examples in modern times of churches that have seen the decline and then
stopped," continued Stonehouse, referring to the Lutheran Church Missouri
Synod and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, both of which moved
significantly toward liberal theology before returning to a conservative
position.
Other delegates, however, warned that women's ordination was only a symptom
of more serious underlying problems in the CRC. "This is not just an issue of
women in office," said Rev. Jeff Taylor. "It would be naive for us to think
the issue is women in office; the issue is also the authority of Scripture,
homosexuality, and creation and evolution."
Taylor noted that strong steps taken with regard to the CRC might not drive
the denomination away but actually restore it. "It is not the end in the
church when there is excommunication," said Taylor of New Hope Presbyterian
Church in Cummings, Georgia. "It would be wonderful if we could in the future
with tears in our eyes welcome them back to fraternal relations because they
have repented."
General Assembly moderator Rev. John Mahaffy relinquished the gavel to speak
in defense of maintaining suspended relations with the CRC rather than moving
to full termination.
Mahaffy, who has monitored the CRC for a number of years, fully agreed that
there were serious problems -- citing the "CRC-Voices" E-Mail discussion list
as one particularly egregious example of a "black hole" in the CRC. "There
are things on there that make my hair stand on end," said Mahaffy. "My
understanding of the Word and what I hear coming from the CRC are very far
apart."
Nevertheless, said Mahaffy, caution is required. "What if our cutting off
fraternal relations with the CRC tips the balance in the way the CRC goes?"
asked Mahaffy. "We must be patient and speak the truth to our brothers in
love."
A number of delegates cautioned that whatever was done to the CRC should not
be perceived as excommunication, noting that the CRC-OPC relationship was
that of sister churches rather than of elders to an erring member over whom
they had authority. "We haven't said anything like they are not a true
church, this doesn't do that, this simply says they are not a church of like
faith and practice," said Rev. Alan Strange of Providence OPC in Glassboro,
NJ. "This isn't discipline, they are our peers, and we are saying we can't
walk with them any more."
Rev. John Galbraith, who served as president of the Reformed Ecumenical
Synod for twelve years and was one of the OPC men who had close contact with
the Dutch Reformed world, took the floor to argue for a motion he wished had
never been necessary. "I am sure there is no one in this room who more than
I, and many of you much less than I, would like to retain relations with the
Christian Reformed Church; I have been connected with the CRC through the OPC
longer than many of you have been alive," said Galbraith.
Nevertheless, Galbraith said clear action on the part of the OPC was
necessary because the CRC was attempting to do "damage control" in the church
world. "The General Secretary of the Christian Reformed Church, who we would
compare to our stated clerk, came to our General Assembly for the first time
in history and I understand is now at the Presbyterian Church in America
General Assembly," said Galbraith. "They came here to control damage;
understandably, they do not want to be held up before the world as a church
which has gone off the deep end and with which other churches feel led to
break relations."
"Suspension says to them and the church worldwide, you go ahead and you do
what you jolly-well want, because we don't mind," said Galbraith. "They have
established that women are going to be ministers and ruling elders in the
Christian Reformed Church, and if you think they are going to defrock those
women, you go and think again."
Elder William Kiester of Calvary OPC in Harrisville, Penn., summed up the
feelings of a number of delegates with a story that brought laughs to an
otherwise tense session. "This motion [for continued suspension] puts us in
the place of a man I knew many years ago in the Civilian Conservation Corps;
he would come in drunk late at night, draw a line across the barracks floor,
and dare anyone to cross it," said Kiester. "One night someone crossed it,
and he backed up and drew another line."
After the General Assembly defeated the proposal to continue suspension of
relations for another four years, it quickly moved to a question of whether
to send a detailed position statement on women in office to the CRC or a
briefer summary of Scriptural evidence. In the end, the General Assembly send
the matter back to committee and adopted a compromise proposal to break ties
with the CRC and send a longer position statement of why the OPC opposes the
ordination of women.
That wasn't the end of the CRC discussion, however. The CRC board of
trustees sent a communication to the OPC General Assembly pertaining to the
secession of the Doon (IA) CRC under the pastorate of OPC minister Rev. Tim
Perkins, a member of the Presbytery of the Dakotas on loan to the Doon CRC.
The communication, signed by CRC General Secretary Dr. David Engelhard and
board of trustees president Rev. Art Schoonveld, stated that it was submitted
"on behalf of the synod of the Christian Reformed Church in North America"
and strongly objected to the OPC's Presbytery of the Dakotas defense of
Perkins in a letter to the CRC's Classis Iakota, which had sent a letter of
protest to the presbytery.
"Little did the classis think it had permitted a wolf to graze among the
flock. He seemed so like the sheep he had come to serve," wrote the board of
trustees. "Mr. Perkins' act of stealing the flock was unconscionable, and the
Presbytery's justification of it was unexpected. Lying in pursuit of the
truth is never justifiable. Misrepresenting the positions of the CRC has
become common place among those seceding from the CRC. It is unfitting,
however, for an OPC minister and presbytery to use those misrepresentations
as justification for promoting and permitting the secession of a congregation
from a sister church."
The CRC board of trustees also protested the comments of the past moderator
of the Presbytery of the Dakotas, Rev. Archibald Alexander Allison, who told
United Reformed News Service that "the Christian Reformed Church is no longer
part of the true church and that is why we are cutting off our relationship
with them."
"If the position articulated by Mr. Allison is the position of the OPC,
please inform us forthwith," wrote the board. "If it is not the position of
the OPC, then we request that you hold the individuals and the presbytery
accountable for their actions and statements and that you discipline them
accordingly."
The letter set off an extended debate on the floor of the assembly, largely
due to procedural questions and differences between Christian Reformed and
Orthodox Presbyterian views of the authority of major assemblies, and
questions about whether the CRC board of trustees has the right to act on
behalf of synod apart from synodical action or action by Classis Iakota to
which Doon CRC formerly belonged.
"I'm convinced that the Iakota Classis is not happy with this because this
letter has been sent only by two officials in Grand Rapids, and there has
been no interest on the part of classis in pursuing this further," said Rev.
G.I. Williamson, a retired OPC minister living in Iowa.
"If the synod has not authorized these two men, they are going to be behind
the eight ball, and perhaps that's where they should be," said Rev. Stuart
Jones of First OPC in Baltimore.
Other OPC delegates urged that the OPC not attempt to interpret CRC polity
and instead simply respond to the letter as written. In the end, the General
Assembly -- which according to OPC rules has no authority to initiate
disciplinary action against ministers or presbyteries -- voted not to publish
the CRC communication in the General Assembly minutes on the grounds that
charges of personal offense and sin needed to be first taken up with the
proper individuals or judicatory before being published more widely. However,
the Assembly did make clear that it had never judged the CRC to be a false
church. The past moderator of presbytery also issued a signed letter
retracting his statement that "we believe the Christian Reformed Church is no
longer part of the true church and that is why we are cutting off our
relationship with them."
CRC Interchurch Relations Committee president Rev. Edward Van Baak said the
vote was not unexpected. "I am disappointed in the decision they made, but
I'm not surprised," said Van Baak, noting that the interchurch committees of
both denominations had conducted extensive meetings on the subject of
biblical interpretation with specific reference to women's ordination.
"Given their position I'm not surprised they came to this conclusion," said
Van Baak. "I'm disappointed because I've seen many areas there has been good
work, and hopefully that would continue."
The two denominations have conducted a number of joint missions works,
including the Reformed Church in Japan where Van Baak served twenty years
before becoming a CRC missions executive.
Cross-References to Related Articles:
#1995-070: Christian Reformed Classes Permitted to Declare Church Order Ban
on Women's Ordination "Inoperative"; Synod Decision Given Immediate Effect
without Two-Year Ratification Process
#1996-070: Christian Reformed Synod Intensifies Restrictions on Gereformeerde
Kerken in Nederland
#1996-071: Orthodox Presbyterian Fraternal Delegate Announces Suspension of
Ties With Christian Reformed Church
#1996-076: CRC Synod Rejects 25 Overtures and Communications Calling for End
to Classical Option on Ordination of Women
#1996-104: New Denomination Born: Most Christian Reformed Seceders Organize
as "United Reformed Churches of North America"
#1996-121B: Conservative Interchurch Council Will Study Discipline of
Christian Reformed Church for Women's Ordination
#1997-064: Orthodox Presbyterian General Assembly to Consider Cutting
Longstanding Christian Reformed Ties
Contact List:
TO REACH DELEGATES DURING THE OPC GENERAL ASSEMBLY, June 4-11, 1997:
c/o Geneva College, Skye Lounge
General Assembly Front Desk: (412) 847-6584
TO REACH DELEGATES AFTER THE OPC GENERAL ASSEMBLY:
Rev. Archibald Alexander Allison, Outgoing Moderator, Presbytery of the
Dakotas
317 E. Swallow Rd., Ft. Collins, CO 80525
H: (303) 282-8011
Rev. Donald Duff, Stated Clerk, Orthodox Presbyterian Church
614 Roberts Ave., Glenside PA 19038-3711
O: (215) 956-0123 * H: (215) 887-4901 * FAX: (215) 957-6286
Dr. David Engelhard, General Secretary, Christian Reformed Church in North
America
2850 Kalamazoo Ave. SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49560
O: (616) 246-0744 * H: (616) 243-2418 * FAX: (616) 246-0834 * E-Mail:
engelhad@crcna.org
Rev. John P. Galbraith, Fraternal Delegate, Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Rte 32, Box 204, Owl's Head, ME 04854
H: (207) 594-7772
Rev. Stuart Jones, Pastor, First Orthodox Presbyterian Church
3455 Erdman Ave., Baltimore, MD 21213
O: (410) 675-4477 * H: (410) 483-2788
Rev. Jerome Julien, Stated Clerk, United Reformed Churches in North America
3646 - 193rd Pl., Lansing, IL 60438
H/O: (708) 418-5321 * FAX: (708) 418-5591
Elder William Kiester, Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church
c/o Calvary OPC, 443 N. Main St., PO Box 59, 16038
O: (412) 735-4523
Rev. John Mahaffy, Moderator, 1997 General Assembly of the Orthodox
Presbyterian Church
1709 N. College, Newburg, OR 97132-9110
H/O/FAX: (503) 538-4652
Rev. Timothy Perkins, Doon Christian Reformed Church (Independent)
511 Rice St., Box 127, Doon IA 51235
O: (712) 726-3314 * H: (712) 726-3160
Rev. Jack Peterson, Chairman, OPC Interchurch Relations Committee
1315 White Rock Drive, San Antonio, TX 78245
O: (210) 690-6360 * H: (210) 675-9097
Art Schoonveld, President, Christian Reformed Church Board of Trustees
3350 Rocky Point Ct., Grandville, MI 49418
O: (616) 534-3114 * H: (616) 538-7886
Rev. Bernard Stonehouse, Missionary at Large, Presbytery of Philadelphia
2450 Norwood Ave., Roslyn, PA 19001
O: (215) 576-5474
Rev. Alan Strange, Pastor, Providence Orthodox Presbyterian Church
103 Deptford Rd., Glassboro, NJ 08028
O: (609) 863-6625 * H: (609) 881-8611 * FAX: (609) 663-6721
Rev. Jeff Taylor, Pastor, New Hope Presbyterian Church
1550 Adair Blvd., Cumming, GA 30130-7809
H: (770) 889-4468 * O: (770) 889-5582
Rev. Tom Tyson, Editor, New Horizons
908 Fernhill Rd., Glenside, PA 19038
O: (215) 956-0123 * H: (215) 886-8315 * FAX: (215) 957-6286
Rev. Edward Van Baak, President, CRC Interchurch Relations Committee
1518 Cambridge SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506-3946
H: (616) 243-0796
Rev. G.I. Williamson
119 Normal College Ave., Sheldon, IA 51201
H: (712) 324-3467 * F: (712) 324-3178
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